This film clip above is the first nine minutes of "Mystery Train" (1989) by indie writer-director Jim Jarmusch. I recently wrote an analysis of this film's use of composition; let's use this segment as an exercise for extracting denotative elements from a communication object — in this case, a film — and ferreting out their connotations.

Participation! Watch the clip above, or a sizable chunk of it. (Nine minutes would be too large a slice for your Part 1's; but here you can at least have more to work with for practice.) Use the comments section below to:— Focus on a small segment, and then write down a sequence of 5-6 denotative elements from the scene. Look for the action, the dialogue, the costumes, the settings, the framing of the shots, the movement of the camera, etc. (For film/video analysis, it really helps to include time stamps with your denotations!) Ask yourself: What's in the script here?— Then discuss the corresponding and contextual connotations for each of those. Ask yourself: What are each of these conscious choices by the filmmaker meant to convey?